A beautiful day

Today started out cloudy and dreary....with a little spitting rain, but has turned into a beautiful day. The sun is shining, they sky is very blue, there is a wonderful breeze and I hear all the birds chirping right outside the window. South Africa is very beautiful.

My day at the creche was a good one. These kids are simply amazing. Today I brought stuff for them to make Valentine Cards and they had cookies and juice. The kids almost never get "sweets" or "biscuits" (their words for the cookies). So when they see me take out the cookies they all start clapping and cheering. I am going around from table to table giving each child two cookies on a napkin. I get to the one table that has the older kids (5 and 6) and 4 of the boys, as I gave them their cookies they said, "Thank you, beautiful." in their sweet little accents. It melted my heart. One of the little girls, the percocious one I've mentioned before....came up to me as I was sitting on a small chair and hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. They are all little dolls.

We did a lot today! I brought paper doilies and construction paper to school today. We showed the children how to fold a red piece of paper in half and cut out the 1/2 of a heart, and unfold it to make a whole one. We wrote Valentine messages inside of their card and they decorated their cards with crayons. They seemed to really enjoy it. I think tomorrow we will make noodle necklaces.

After we made the cards, we had the cookies and juice....then they were given books to "read." They actually were to look at the pictures and then tell the class what they saw. I'm trying to pick up some Xhosa words from the kids. Then we sang the Alphabet and did the Calendar. Then it was outside play for a bit. I always spend that time pushing children on swings and being a human jungle gym. Then came lunch.....rice, a very little bit of what appeared to be kale and potatoes.

While I was helping the teacher put the mats down for nap, while the kids were eating...I was asking her about the ill children. She pointed out one little boy that just lost his father last month to AIDS. The child lives with his mother and two siblings. I'm not sure about the mother, but the siblings are fine and our student has AIDS. He takes medicine twice per day and seems to be doing well. Actually, he is one of the more healthy looking ones. He is full of energy. I did ask the teacher if the meds were readily available and she said yes. She said there were a few kids in the class on meds.

After we returned to homebase, we had someone come in from this organization called Positive Muslims who do HIV/AIDS education. I learned a few more things and got clarification on others. It was very informative. The speaker herself is positive. The statistics here in Cape Town are staggering. They have a drug now, that when an HIV+ mother is pregnant, they can give her drugs at the time of delivery and continue the baby on drugs for a brief period after to prevent the mother from infecting her baby. That sounds promising...but also creates other issues. It's not very socially acceptable to not breastfeed here and if a mother is not breastfeeding then it's obvious to others that the mother must be infected....so some breastfeed anyway....which infects the baby. The other issue....the baby is protected.....while their parents are infected...so this is creating more orphaned children.

I asked our guest speaker about the availability of meds and she too said that the meds are available at all the clinics and for free. One problem...some people live so far away from the clinics and it's too far to walk, so some can't always get there to get meds. They also have a problem with folks either getting some of their meds stolen or they sell some of it, because the younger folks here are using it as their drug of choice for getting high. They crush the pill and smoke it. I guess they sell some of it because they are so poverty stricken, it's easy money.

Today was an interesting day and I learned a lot. I'm starting to understand their issues and their culture a bit more, which is making things a little less difficult for me.

Looking forward to going in and loving on the kids tomorrow!!